


Car Trouble

by MilkshakeKate



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Car Sex, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sharing Body Heat, Snow, Snowed In, eat it illya god damn, for the mission ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), gotta... take em off ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), oh no, we are so cold and wet look at our clothes... gosh...........
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-21 07:40:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6043615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkshakeKate/pseuds/MilkshakeKate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>En route to meeting Solo at their backup rendez-vous location, Illya and Gaby are stranded in an Alpine blizzard. Both of them, soaking wet and freezing, hole up in the tiny broken car to practise their elemental exposure survival training (absolutely necessarily) while waiting for the blizzard to pass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The amber headlights reflected off the snow and into Illya’s eyes with a piercing cut. It lit his lashes, washed out the blue. It didn't soften the frown, the furrow of his brow as he stared ahead, squinting into it.

They were late.

Snow was banked high at the roadside, shovelled hurriedly by the maintenance workers whose shifts had ended long before theirs; five o’clock, and their cut off for meeting Solo at the next railway station.

It was his own fault. They’d lost him at Biasca station after he’d followed their mark into a carriage without warning. He’d carded three fingers through his hair at them through the window: the third strain of their backup plan — reconvene forty five minutes north-west, at their booked bed and breakfast in the intimate, hidden Swiss village of Göschenen.

So Illya stared on, still rapt with fury at Solo's incompetence, through the incessant clatter of the windscreen wipers, their rhythmic shifting of the snow in swathes. The squeak and clunk of the wipers was the only sound in the car, the only movement besides Gaby’s clenching fists on the wheel, infuriated by having to travel at crawling pace for the past twenty minutes.

The car was hot, suffocating, despite the biting wind outside. Shedding her coat had done little to cool her down. They couldn't open a window without a flurry of white flakes wetting and freezing what or whomever they landed on, threatening to turn their predicament from irritating to nothing short of agonising.

Illya had already shrugged out of his brown suede jacket, folding it to sit between them on the front seat like a sleeping dog. Gaby would have welcomed such a companion; the snow was no colder than the two meter block of ice crammed into the seat beside her.

And yet it wasn't the blizzard that angered her most. More than Solo’s deviation from the brief, more than the ice and the black night too dark to squint through, it was Illya that maddened her.

It was the sheer size of him, stuffed into this hot, close space like some sort of cosmic joke. The fold of his knees crammed against the dashboard had tightened his trousers against his thighs to something obscene. The sleeves of his turtleneck - that  _infuriating_  turtleneck - were rolled up his forearms, which shone at her in the slim honeyed light with blond hairs, muscle, tendons, scars.

He sniffed, breaking the searing quiet.

Gaby switched to a lower gear for the impending hill.

“We should stop,” Illya said.

“It isn’t much further.”

He ducked his head, too tall to see straight ahead. “That hill is too steep.”

“I can do it.”

“Bad idea.”

Gaby, jaw set tightly, made to tackle the hill.

Pitch black but for the meagre beam of the headlights, the hill became less of a slope and more of a crag; a long, relentless slog up slushed grey sleet and black ice.

“Stop the car,” Illya said firmly.

The wheels spun under her, the engine whining.

“I can do it.”

She cranked down a gear, wishing she didn’t have to work against the extra hundred kilogrammes of concentrated doubt sat beside her.

Illya braced into the foot well in anticipation, his right hand pressed between the door and the roof.

“Don’t do that,” she scolded.

He ignored her.

Gaby gave one final push, first gear and foot to the floor, before the car locked and choked to dead silence.

It slipped, careering to the right with the weight on Illya’s side and into the high banking of snow. It didn’t stop, rolling through the white wall of it with the handbrake locked tight over the black ice like water on oil.

Gaby gripped the wheel — she shouldn’t have fought it. She lifted the handbrake and hit the foot brake in bursts, steering into it with all she could and choking the ignition, furious and embarrassed.

“Get out,” Illya ordered, door already open into the blizzard and planting his feet on the ground to resist the pull of the ice.

Gaby yanked out her seatbelt and opened her door, staggering out into the snow. The freezing cold hit her skin like a slap, her bare knees buckling against the vicious wind. She mourned her coat on the back seat, the flakes of ice shattering over her bare arms and neck like bullets.

She stood and shook the wet snow from her arms, grabbing them in the still-warm flush of her hands, and hurried after the rolling car.

Illya had thrown his weight against the inside of open door, his boots skidding under him. The road barrier was meters away, barely waist high and shuddering weakly in the wind between he and the car and the sheer cliff drop.

“Illya?!” She grabbed at the wing mirror and pulled with all her strength, furious at the weakness the cold struck into her -- she slipped, hanging on by the mirror and barely able to pull her legs from being crushed under the wheels.

The car creaked to a stop, followed by a crunch of hard body into the snow.

Gaby struggled to her knees, to her feet, climbing around the front of the car with something hot in her eyes, the taste of blood in her throat.

Illya lay in the snow with his arm over his face, his chest heaving. His boot was hooked up inside the car awkwardly, the hem of his trousers hitched and a torrent of snow pouring into the leg.

“I told you,” he managed, when she appeared behind him. “Bad idea.”

Gaby pulled under his arms to sit him up and prop him against the open door frame. He did it himself, taking her aid only as a gesture. Goosebumps prickled his forearms, the wet snow seeping through the shoulders of his sweater in a close, dark stretch over the shape of him.

She turned, hiding her embarrassment in the arm she drew over her running nose.

“Get inside,” she said.

Gaby began packing the snow behind the back wheels with her boot, scraping away the shroud of white to find the black dirt under it. If they wanted to leave any time soon, she’d need grip for the wheels to get their bearings, to get back on the road. They were lucky the decline was wide and shallow; the other side was an immediate, mountainous drop. She'd been reckless - but, burning up in body and mind, she felt she'd needed to be; nothing infuriated her more than a backseat driver, and Illya, a close match in skill, was the worst offender of all.

 _She_ was the professional. It was _her_ call, on paper and unspoken. She'd hissed this at him twice in the past thirty minutes alone and so, of course, under his unblinking stare she was mortified.

She pushed her fallen hair from her eyes. She’d need to dry out the battery, give a thorough sweep over the brakes, check the radiator; she could smell the thing burning up under the strain, the merciless thrust of her foot to the pedal. Whether she found the fault or not, she fumed, she hadn’t brought her tools. They were essentially stranded.

Illya’s voice woke her from her angry daze. She’d found herself staring through the back window at her coat like a lost ghost.

“Get inside,” Illya echoed her, the door to the back seat open and waiting. How long had she been punishing herself? He fixed her with an expression that wouldn’t relent, unmoving under the battering of the white flakes and looking unquestionably Russian.

Gaby scowled and crunched through the snow to duck into the back of the car.

She grabbed her coat to her chest. The satin lining warmed to her immediately, soon sopping wet with the snow on her cheeks, her eyelashes.

Illya climbed in after her, sealing the door behind him with a clunk.

He reached over to the front seat to grab his jacket and settle it over her knees. Then he took her arm and flinched, with a frown, for the bitter chill of it. He began by rubbing up and down as to ignite kindling, though his hands were just as cold. 

“Are you alright?” she asked, peering at him from the corner of her eye. Her hands felt useless in her lap, flinching to take his hold on her arms and press it somewhere, anywhere. She swallowed. Touching him while he seethed and loomed like that was to reach into a bear trap, pluck a tripwire. 

“Fine. Thank you.” He covered her shoulders with her coat and took her fingers between his palms, pressed together as if in prayer, to leak the meagre heat through.

She watched his face, his eyes as they avoided her own and the unspoken understanding between them. Survival training, essential skills. Body heat. He flicked a glance at her, checking her face for something she couldn’t guess would tell him about her health. She felt fire under her cheeks, blamed it on the desperate bid to warm up. She imagined she was pink, her nose red, lashes wet.

She had expected a firm telling off. But still he worked over her, inspecting her in the dark with an expression flitting between angered, dutiful, worried. His back must have frozen to the core by now; soaked through his sweater and into the muscle of him, ossifying his blood and leeching into his chest, which heaved now, a little too close, and was beating the familiar smell of him - all Russian leather and shaving cream. She smelled clean sweat on him, tinged metallic in his way; wet and raw, his work-warm skin against the icy wind and drawing him in tight.

He watched her. His lips were parted — was he shivering?

Had she been staring?

She bravely curved an arm behind him, touching the dip between his shoulder blades with her fingers.

Soaking wet, bitterly cold.

He was staring at her with meaning, searching with a courage he hadn’t employed in months.

She pressed her hand down the long stretch of his back, all the way down to the hem of his sweater, to the hard edge of his belt, and pressed gently at the slightest line of bare skin between them.

Illya swallowed.

She experimentally pushed her hand under his sweater, feeling the base of his spine, the give of muscle at his waist under her touch. It radiated under her, the goosebumps there wavering under the brush of her fingers; fighting, drinking in the new warmth.

All the time, she watched his long lashes brush over his cheekbones. His eyes, when he could focus, were on hers with that marksman’s stare, guessing her next move.

She pressed her hand up the curve of his back to the valley between his shoulders. It warmed, almost hot, under her palm. Illya closed his eyes. She felt the shift of the thick muscle in him, leonine, relaxing into her as if she were lulling him to sleep. He exhaled between them, and instinctively she breathed him in, solely Illya; ice water, black tea. She longed to close the gap, to press her lips to his and taste him, drink him up.

“You must be cold,” he said lowly. She hadn’t known how quiet it had been. The windscreen wipers had long since been put to rest, the snow falling noiseless on the roof and windows. It was as if they were inside a private little cave. The windows were curtained with white flakes, folding the two of them into their own dark world and a privacy they’d never been afforded.

It thrilled her.

“You too,” she managed, pulsing her finger tips into his back, the scars, flecks, and muscle his jacket hid from everybody in the world but her, now, feeling them for herself in the dark.

He swallowed again, eyes darting over her. Always calculating, always anticipating the next move, the counter. In all the time she’d wished for such an escape from their work, she’d never imagined he would lose that ticking concentration, that strategic hold of his eyes on his mark. She wondered what would break him into a creature of instinct, of touch and want when he wanted it - when he craved it - not when it was ordered of him.

With that, she eyed his strong fist on his thigh, the other on the sleeve of her coat; clutched, she read, as if desperate to take it off her, to see what was underneath.

She shrugged it from her shoulders, revealed the tan, slim tone of her bare arms.

He idly lay the coat over the back of the driver’s seat, eyes narrowing but unmoving. She felt the insistence in him; to keep warm, to wrap up.

But he only watched.

Touching the hem of her top, she felt her own tide mark of melted snow, nipping at her waist and shoulders with an icy bite. She kept her eyes on him, crossing her arms over her stomach to take the corners of her shirt, to pull it up and over her head as if unwrapping a present. She sat under his gaze then like a painter’s model, and he watched her like one too; a lucky amateur, always swallowing, always composing himself.

She took his hand from his thigh and touched it to the slim strap of her brassiere, pushed it down her shoulder for him.

Illya shifted slowly in the seat, taking her arm in his hand, a little warmer now, and ran a gentle thumb over her bare collarbone. She had never imagined that touch. He brushed the other strap from her shoulder and rolled the slim fabric between his thumb and forefinger, admiring it with that unreadable gaze.

She felt the shake in his hands and fondly believed it could be nerves. But when she took his face in her palm, she brushed over his jaw to find it clenched tight, severing the chattering of his teeth. He was an icicle, his skin prickling under her touch.

“Illya?”

“ _Da_?” he said, waking a little. “Are you warmer? I should—”

“You’re frozen solid.”

He didn’t deny it.

She took her hand back, clutched the suede jacket he’d placed needlessly over her legs. She glanced pointedly at his chest. “Take that off.”

He nodded, tugging the turtleneck over his head without a thought. He emerged, hair mussed; closer to the tousled, instinctive unmasking she’d dreamed of on him for months, all open and tired, a little hungry.

Reluctantly she gave him his dry suede jacket, mourning as he pulled it over the broad rounds of his bare shoulders, the hard cut of his chest and the blond hair stretching there and down to his navel, lower.

She sat back then, and he settled back to look at her, with his wet sweater folded over the front seat alongside her shirt and coat; the two of them in a state of undress, struggling to hide their wandering eyes.

He did look over her with an endearingly soviet humility, careful not to take in too much of her. She wanted him to. She felt only the band of her skirt at her waist, her skin warming in the closing heat of the car but nonetheless shivering, and wished to be touched by his hands there. To feel the rhythmic pulse of heat from him.

Illya came to attention then, as if catching himself indulging, and grabbed her coat. He made to replace it over her bare shoulders as she had for him.

Gaby pushed it aside. She took instead the cuffs of his brown jacket and pulled him across the seat towards her. She searched his face; his pupils blown, lips parted in waiting; before slipping her hands around his bare waist and into the back of his jacket.

He tensed. The suede and the contact of his skin sank heat deep into her like nothing else. She sighed close to Illya’s neck and his breath hitched at the sensation of it, ghosting over him as his had over her, and she knew what it did to him. It had done the same to her; insist, imply — this is what it could sound like, feel like, if they were to give in.

She leant back to lie down, pulling him cruelly further into the cramped space to lie over her, his foot braced behind the front seat and knee crushed into the cushion of the back, crawling over her with that hungering, lessening composure she was hunting for.

She wound her arms around him, pulling him down, showing him where she wanted him. He lowered slowly, bracing his hands on the seat, covering her. 

“Better,” she said.

Illya hummed, his face close as she traced her hands up his back again, exploring, memorising. How had they ended up here? He peered down at her, her head tilted to watch him lower over her with a heady fascination, his jacket open and his stomach flush with hers as if this was no more than routine, as if this was elemental survival training. He was glad it wasn’t; no minutes to mark the end of the session, no mirrored viewing window for his assessors.

He smiled at Gaby then, in the quiet privacy of their snowed in car, pointedly ignoring the growing cramp in his thigh, and thought of kissing her.

She opened her eyes, her hands bravely slipping around to the front of him, to the curves of muscle in his sides, tensing in his effort to hover his weight over her, and the deep lines of his chest. She wondered if Illya were screaming in his head; that this was not protocol, that this was inappropriate. If he was, he hid it well.

Then she read him for a moment, his forced composure. Would he ever relent? The boyish twist of his hair still coiled a little spring through her. It was asking to be touched a way fashionably oiled hair never did. She wanted him messy. She wanted him to be wholly Illya, but safe, unhurried, off-duty Illya, who could smile without looking over his shoulder, and could whisper without another agent listening in.

“Roll over,” she said, and he looked down at her as if she’d asked him to dance.

“Not possible.”

She thought for a moment. “Lie back, then.”

He pressed his lips together. “This will not be easy.”

“Have a little faith.”

Illya sighed into her shoulder. He rose with a clumsy reluctance, bumping his head on the roof. She smirked privately as he tried to manoeuvre himself, like a ship trying to dock in a pond. He angled his long legs around her as she perched there on her knees, watching him, catching glances of the chest waiting there for her when he was ready.

He frowned to himself, trying to rest his head against the door comfortably, bending his knees and cursing at the bang of his elbow on the window ledge.

Then he grumbled, still and satisfied.

Gaby crawled over him, dropped herself between his knees without a flinch.

“Better?” she asked teasingly, peering up at him from his chest, the column of his throat. She felt his stomach tense under hers, the warmth of it bleeding through again and she had missed it, the solid weight of him.

“Better,” he agreed, wincing as he clenched and unclenched his thigh. “It was not easy.”

“Sorry.”

“Small sacrifice.” He slowly took her waist in his broad palms, pressing.

She looked up beneath her lashes. He was watching her intently. She could have forgotten they were in a car, on a mission, in Switzerland; but it was important to her that they were. Undeniable and unavoidable. It couldn’t have been anywhere else. They would never have braved this had they been in a hotel room, a safe house; no matter how long they had danced around it, thought idly of it before falling asleep in their separate beds, separate rooms. The shield of snow and closed doors seemed to have brought down their insurmountable wall, rid the two of them of the eyes they felt on their backs from dawn til dusk.

But their backs were hidden then; his to the flat of the back seat and hers, suddenly, under the shield of his arms. Illya had wrapped the sides of his jacket up and over her back, pulled her flush with him to thaw her.

She sighed before she knew she had, lying down to breathe in the warmth of his chest and listen discreetly to his heart. It beat slow, steady. It calmed her, close enough to fall asleep to, replacing the incessant  _click click click_  of the car with a reliable drumming, strong and deep inside him. She felt a surge of inexplicable affection. She thought suddenly of how his heart must have raced and stuttered and hardened before. Where now it lay under her, red and soft and close, as if she could reach in and touch it and, with his arms wrapped tightly around her, perhaps he would have let her.

Illya’s breath rose and fell so evenly she assumed he had fallen asleep. She peeped from the corner of her eye up to his neck, to the stubble forming under his jaw. He caught her eye before running a hand through the damp hair over her shoulders, mumbling something in Russian -  something he hadn’t taught her yet.

“Warmer?” she asked.

“Not yet,” he said, quietly covetous.

She shifted to get comfortable and he let his hands rise from her back, allowing her to leave if she wanted. When she returned they settled back on her a little tighter, grateful. She had underestimated the power of skin over skin, and was glad they both had an excuse for it. Cold wet clothes were deadly, an exposure hazard. It was all in the field training, a module on both team and individual health and safety awareness. Perhaps they would get extra credit.

He must have felt her smirking into him, as he’d taken the opportunity to graze the back of his knuckles down the curve of her spine, settling down on her lower back.

“We’ll have to start walking if the blizzard doesn’t clear,” she said. “We’ll be snowed in.”

Illya hummed, rumbling deep through his chest. “Perhaps this isn’t such a problem.”

It surprised her. She imagined he had such words pent up inside him until he’d find the courage to say them aloud - always accompanied by a wry smile to soften the blow. It was the humour in him, one he showed to only a select few, like a bright jewel in cupped palms.

Those palms were heavy on the small of her back then, and they bled more warmth through her. In her shift to get comfortable, she’d felt the unmistakable heat of him through his slacks, and coloured for it. He’d been gentlemanly enough, perhaps privately mortified enough, to right himself away from her. Still...

She tested the waters, bracing her elbows into what little seat his body didn’t occupy, and shifted up over him. 

Illya paid close attention then, peering down his sharp nose as she came level with him, hovering. She looked down her lashes at him and he swallowed dryly, eyes a little wide, a little less focused.

She ducked to press her lips over his.

He was beautifully sleepy, his kiss a warm brush and unimaginably soft for all she’d expected of him. His eyes were still closed when she rose, lips still parted.

“To warm up,” Gaby excused headily.

Illya’s hand splayed over her waist, cupped the curve of her hip. He managed to nod his head sarcastically, looking from her mouth to her eyes. “Exposure shock.”

“Exactly.”

Gaby kissed him again, rolling her hips down into that hidden heat. A moan broke out of him, delicious and impulsive. He shifted his thighs apart and pressed down into the small of her back to meet him there.

The broken sounds he made, the taste and heat of his tongue on hers, paced and slow, melted the car away to nothing. He lost himself in her; she felt him relaxing, sinking, finally. The rigid posture and the guard dissolved a little with his groaning sighs, his moving over her with strong, skilled hands.  

They parted, foreheads together in rest. Illya’s body betrayed him as he tried to hide his laboured breathing, the muscles of his stomach stuttering under her.

She opened her eyes to his low laugh.

“What are you laughing at?”

“This.”

“What  _about_  this?” she demanded, reddening.

“So,” he began, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “All it takes is blizzard, hypothermia, and broken car on mountainside to kiss you.”

Gaby scoffed quietly. She swept her gaze from his lips to the windscreen, fully matte with a thick grey blanket of snow between them and the rest of the world.

All it took.

She lifted his left arm from her back and glanced fondly at his watch. They’d already missed their second rendezvous at the hotel by fifteen minutes. She hoped the snow would bury the car, so Solo wouldn’t retrace his steps and find them sprawled like this; a little spent but nowhere near as much as she’d like them to be.

Illya took back his arm to stroke her back, her waist, breathing easily and open and warm. She ducked to kiss the join between his neck and his shoulders. He hummed under her lips, rewarded her with a sweep of his hand under the sheer band of her brassiere. He toyed with the loose straps as if he had all the time in the world.

“The snow is still heavy,” he said. “We may get lost walking to Göschenen.”

“Is that right?”

“It’s not safe.”

Gaby hummed convincingly. “What would KGB do, Kuryakin?”

For the briefest moment, he glanced away, remembering the weight of the world outside the car.

She caught herself breaking the spell they'd cast. She turned his face to her, traced over the scar on his temple with deliberate tenderness.

He covered her hand with his, leant into it.

“Well,” she said, “I’ve received the order that we’re to rest here until morning.”

“Understood," he said distantly. He brought her palm to his lips to kiss it, drawing a new and pleasant shiver through her.

She reached back to unclasp her brassiere and settled down into the bare, open heat of him all over again.


	2. Chapter 2

A low sound fell from him. An unintentional moan.

She smirked into Illya’s neck, revelling in the vibration humming through him. Her slight breasts were bare, flush and full against him. The cold didn’t ease him; her nipples were taut, sensitive to the chill of the car and the heat of his bare chest, the halting touch of his fingers over her ribs.

Illya, for all his cooled restraint, didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. They only rested there, safe on her back and occasionally sweeping over the curve of her.

Gaby took his bewilderment proudly to heart, having reduced The Red Peril to a bundle of nerves and boyish good fortune. She decided to let him make up his mind when he was ready, looking forward to it like a gift.

Besides, she had already found the dip between his jaw and his ear and she never wanted to leave it, pressing experimental kisses there and feeling him stretch and stifle his shallow groans.

But too soon he pulled her away from the warm crook, to weave his hand into her hair and turn her to look at him.

He was such a sight that, even in the dark, he made her stop. His pupils were blown, the slim corona of blue sucked up by the black. He took her in deeply and purposefully, looking over her like he wanted nothing more than to taste her, swallow her whole.

She swallowed then, the warm tension inside her making itself known.

Illya stroked through her hair and watched her easily as she leant on his chest, trying to decipher him. He’d been hesitant, gentle so far, always measuring how best to hold her in his strength. His shock was still there; a faint, pinkish blush high on his cheeks betraying that all-knowing composure he was trying to prove. He’d adopted the same impassivity he wore in his work, when his cover was threatened, his private intentions compromised.

But under the straight brow and steady gaze, she saw - _felt -_ something close to possession; a little forbidden greed she’d not seen on him before, ever the beacon of hate for gluttony. Watching him look over her like that, unguessable and still, felt like waiting for an ambush.

But she _wanted_ him to ambush her. Wanted him to sweep her up, gorge himself on her in a way that made her soften between his legs, and brought a tight, foreign heat between her own.

Gaby decided to press him. She wanted him to succumb to whatever he hid in those polite, capable hands.

Between his thighs, she tried another roll of her hips to meet the length of him - pressed tight against his slacks and desperate now - before pulling away to watch his eyes roll back and swallow a moan. She dipped her lips to his neck as she bowed into him again, taking in the taste of his shaving cream, the clean sweat of his struggle to save her car. He shone under her tongue as she worked over the column of his throat with sucks and imploring kisses, drawing what she could out of him.

“Gaby—” he managed gruffly, stilling her hips with a heavy palm.

“ _Da_?” she encouraged.

Illya’s chest rose and fell indiscreetly, teasing her breasts as he tried to find the right words.

She sank her face to his collarbone and breathed, a little embarrassed by her sudden need for him, and tried to compose herself.

“Do you want this?” he asked, brushing the spill of her hair from his cheek.

Gaby stilled then, and he waited for her.

She wanted him now. She wanted him all over her. The too-real press of his strong thighs against her hips, just resting there, drew something wild and strange through her that washed away any doubt.

She knew it to be reckless. Their work meant nothing within the muted, protective walls of the car — but what would become of them once they left it? In the hotel, on the plane, back at HQ? She imagined the brunt of his cold shoulder the moment they reunited with Solo; his cool rejection in favour of their privacy, protecting her or not, and it stung, because she knew she would have to maintain that façade for him too. Always. The kiss he’d pressed to her palm, his moaning her name… She’d have to forget them. And he, dragged back to Russia when his handler grew wary, would have to forget them too.

She had been still for too long, and Illya’s hands were loosening on her back. She pulled away from his collarbone to look at him.

“Do you?” she countered.

Illya nodded, sure and slow.

It dissolved something in her, as if she’d unwound the endless spool of worry spinning in her head and had shown it to him, wordless and open, and he had recognised it. She imagined he must have questioned her for the same reason; to prepare for the ache if she’d said no, the struggle if she’d said yes.

The deep kiss he pulled her into was more deliberate than the rest. He pressed into her with his tongue, opening her up to bring her back to him.

“I want it,” she whispered blindly. “This.”

“Alright,” he murmured, low and thick, and she felt him slow under her.

She swallowed headily for what was to come.

Kissing the corner of her mouth, he brought his hands to her waist and urged her to kneel up. He didn’t rush. He traced over the flat of her stomach, the slight under-curve of her breasts with his thumbs, and held her there for a moment, looking. She closed her eyes, waited for him to cup her in his hands.

Not yet.

Illya took her thighs slowly and, one after the other, guided her to straddle him.

Heat crawled up her chest and into her cheeks, colouring her so quickly she felt the rush of it, sudden and dizzying. Looking down at him made it worse. He was appreciating every inch of her with a warm focus; the same concentration he wore when admiring beautiful clothing, more so when she modelled them for him; when he’d turn her in his hands like a ripe fruit.

Those hands lingered at the delicate hem of her skirt. He pushed it up her thighs just a touch, only to watch it slowly slide back down again. He hummed thoughtfully, drawing his palms to settle over the curve of her hips.

Gaby settled down onto him, the bulk of his weight shifting pleasantly between her legs. She felt every inch of his torso, his muscles undulating under her, stirring her. She calmed her breathing, unaware she’d been holding it and letting go in bursts.

Neither could shake the need to read the other. Measuring, anticipating, competing. While he focused on her with a determination he reserved for chess, she realised she had never stared at him for this long before. He was rapt but restrained, bare, leaning into her attention whenever he could; his eyes on her bare skin, his fingers on her thighs... She couldn’t believe he was there, under her. She couldn’t keep her eyes off him.

Illya pressed gently between her shoulders to coax her down to his chest again, to warm her through in the cold they’d forgotten. He made a fool out of her, the way she melted into him when he kissed her. He’d try to part from her with gentler, smaller kisses, but she’d press back harder to bring him back to the start, over and over, still getting used to the press of his nose against her cheek, his stubble grazing pleasantly over her chin. She didn’t know if she would ever get used to it. It excited her to think that someday she could.

Illya drifted his hands, braver now, to pull her to meet the unsubtle rise in his slacks with a sudden, firm stop. His thighs bent behind her to hold her there, where he padded over her hips to adjust her weight, her pressure on him.

Gaby impatiently took one of his wandering hands, pulled it to her breast to feel the firm shiver he’d drawn from her.

He smiled privately and attended to her, running his thumb over her and pinching gently, only to withdraw with her fingers still clutched around his wrist and needing more.

Instead he lured her down to him for another kiss, another, until she’d forgotten whatever fury she’d felt at his leisureliness and melted, close to sleep in his arms.

Illya rose his hips to meet her and rode under her skirt, brushed the line of his cock tight and flush against her in one long, hard stroke. She breathed a laugh, of all things, into his open mouth. Disbelief; a well of nerves bubbling over her as she felt him between her legs as surely as if he were in her hand.

The warmth and pressure was too much, too full where she flickered with sensitivity. But he held down the small of her back and ground up against the heat of her, his kiss on her neck dropping to a moan of her name, tapering into something Russian.

Her eyes fluttered closed, focusing on the weight of his broad palm smoothing over her skirt, his cock tight and close, but not close enough, against the dampening heat between her legs until she felt she’d go mad if he didn’t touch her there soon, now, _now_.

Kissing him quickly, she pressed his hand under her skirt; made him feel the cut of her underwear tight around her thighs, the curve of her half-bared cheeks.

Too lost to kiss her neatly, he let her guide his fingers over the soft swell of her labia through the cotton, feel the wet heat he’d pulled from her.

He swallowed, and she kissed the movement in his throat until he took the hint. She kissed up his neck and along the stubbled line of his jaw while he touched her, pressed between her and over her, stopping her in her tracks with the right touch _just_ there. She rolled back against his fingers, pushing, pleading. He watched her face soften and frown with need, and tried his best to meet her where she wanted him.

“ _Illya_ ,” she groaned mindlessly.

“Hmm?”

“ _Gott,_ Illya.”

He pressed a rare grin into her neck and she felt his teeth on her. She tilted into it, his bite under her ear softened with a close, hot lick that made her light headed.

“Have you thought of this before?” he murmured over her.

She nodded for too long. “Have you?”

“Very often.”

“When?” 

His hand slowed to deep, idle strokes as he thought.

“At night,” he said. “Most nights. ”

She swallowed a moan, his fingers rolling hypnotic, too-slow circles over her clitoris. He seemed to enjoy it, kept up the agonising pace just to watch her.

She pressed her cheek to his to spite him, so he wouldn’t see her eyes roll, her mouth drop open. She didn’t want to relent yet; didn’t yet want to laud praises over him for the talent he showed off to her, in case he became too proud.

“What do you think of?” She turned her head to rest against the collar of his jacket, to smell the faint cologne and warm leather as he worked her.

Illya covered her hand on his chest. “We share a bed,” he began quietly, unfaltering in his rhythm. “You in your blue pyjamas, tired. You move close to me in the cold, like this, and you kiss me.” He kissed her crown, soft enough to make her forget what he was doing to her. He paused for a long while, then shrugged. “Mostly we kiss. Roll around, touching. I have thought about sex, of course. Never in cars.”

She laughed.

“In bed,” he said seriously. “Sometimes on the floor. Tasting you.”

Gaby flushed red, a hot pulse coursing through her. Eyes wide open, she pressed her mouth to his chest and ground hard against his fingers to encourage him, reward him.

His rumbling moan fell over her shoulder, and he pulled her strongly against his chest, clutching her hand as if she were his racing heart. It brought another shiver and she knew, then, that she was too mad with need to move so slowly.

Against all instinct, she pulled away from him to sit up. His eyes closed as she rolled over the heat through his slacks, not at all forgotten, and flew immediately open again at the touch of her fingers over his belt, hurried and eager. She pulled the leather belt out loop after loop, dropped it on the front seat.

Gaby unbuttoned him, pulled the waist to his bent knees behind her. She settled back down to sit on him, riding over his bound cock, and let out an involuntary gasp at the jolt of his hips to match her, hot and hard.

She looked down. Illya, a wreck, flitted glances boyishly from her face to her breasts to his dark briefs like a semaphore routine. She beamed cruelly and rolled again, bending to kiss him messily.

His lips slackened, finally lost to her. He’d brought her to this same state of incomprehension; messily lazy but too awake, too stimulated to rest, and he felt it for himself then. Impulsively she reached between her thighs to run a firm hand over him, showing him how easily the touch could mesmerise.

He grunted, breath halting. She spotted a bite of anger in him, before he brought her mouth to his, licking and whispering into her, begging her to do it again. She did, tightening the cup of her hand down his cock, confirming that it was blissfully paired; proportional to the rest of him in a way that daunted her, thrilled her possessively. She swallowed and ran a thumb over the head, watching his gaze roll from her face up to the car roof.

“Gaby,” he choked out, grabbing her ass so firmly she thought it might bruise. The thought sparked a surprising, lewd pleasure in her that made her frown. “Please. Slower.”

“Close?”

“Too close.” Illya swallowed, eyes shut.

“Don’t you want to?”

“ _Da_ ,” he said darkly, too quickly. “But we have the night. We have all night.”

All night. Gaby couldn’t decide if this was a blessing or a curse. He would do it, too; once Illya’s mind was set, it took little less than a Mexican stand-off to change it. She thought of his hands - which now were smoothing over her ass in slow, soothing circles - all over her. His mouth too, teasing and sucking and tasting for hours, hours, hours.

She swallowed, touched his tousled hair delicately. She could take that, she thought generously.

Could he? 

Illya hummed then, his breath slowing. She traced the zip of his open jacket with her thumb, waiting for him.

Eventually he began to move, shifting his shoulders up the door to sit up, stretching his legs. She followed him over the seat on her knees, unsure where to be taken until his hands planted on her hips, sitting her firmly in his lap to face him.

Rolling a knot from his shoulder against the snowy window, he gave a shallow hiss.

“Mostly in bed, for good reason,” he reminded her.

Gaby smiled in commiseration. “We can stop,” she suggested, already trailing her arms around his neck.

He gave her a withering look, the faintest smile in his eyes. “I think not.”

“Good. Touch me, then.”

He didn’t need to be asked twice. Illya drew a slow hand up her waist to cup her breast and play with her. He covered her neck with flattering hums, his lips vibrating over her as he moved, always, to give her more.

He surprised her with the easy slip of his fingers into her underwear, searching for the first time over the trimmed hair and the warm wetness of her. He hummed appreciatively, stroking between her labia and feeling her tighten up against him, trying to pull him in.

Illya ducked to kiss her shoulder, slipping his middle finger deep into her so smoothly she sighed with relief over his ear. Goosebumps rose at the nape of his neck, shivvering under her palm.

She slid her hands into his jacket. There, she felt the work of his muscles as he pressed into her rhythmically, the deep noises he made travelling through his chest to his shoulder blades, pulsing under her fingers. She breathed over his shoulder, riding into his hand and sacrificing her composure for high gasps, longer moans.

The sounds worked him harder, his free hand slipping to her ass to still her; to stop her from bearing down onto his cock and draw him too close just by hearing her, holding the weight of her so easily as she used him.

He withdrew and rubbed the pad of his finger over her clit, slowing her. She huffed, frustrated, and bucked against him to end the teasing. It was futile; the more she rebuked him the more pleased he became, using it to draw her to a peak only to pull it away from her and watch her plead for more. Ever the strategist; the sadist.

“Let me,” she ordered him, but it fell out in a weak plea. “Illya. Let me. I can go twice.”

He kissed her jaw firmly to make her face him. “Only twice?”

She glared down her nose. There was that humour again, making it infuriatingly difficult to scold him as he stroked her leisurely, his gaze on her chest, admiring her and avoiding her eye.

He tried to kiss her but she’d pressed her lips tightly. “Gaby,” he said lowly, like a warning. He cupped her breast and kissed her cheek instead, imploring. “I will let you. I want you to.”

“Prove it.”

Illya bowed his head dutifully. She already regretted it.

His broad hands softened over her breasts and brushed over her nipples with a new touch, a focused one. He began kissing languorously over her neck, her jaw, tracing the deep line of her spine with the rough tips of his fingers.

She was losing herself humiliatingly quickly as he spread her low over his cock, rolled her there with an even, measured skill. He pulled back to watch her with a glint in his eye. She avoided it, taking his hair in her fist and dropping her face to the back of her hand, mouthing curses she didn't want him to hear.

He ground up against her, biting back his own moans to better listen for hers, testing the waters with the feel of her in his hands; she tensed when she was close to the edge, relaxed unwillingly when he relieved it.

So he pushed. He pushed her to a strung out tension as he felt over the crease of her hips, pressing possessively there with his thumbs, before pulling her underwear down as far as her spread thighs would let him. He braced his hand on her waist, pressed the other down her stomach, circling to find the spot she’d once guided him to with instinct.

Finally she broke out a muffled groan into his shoulder, and his grin pressed against her neck maddeningly, reminding her that he was winning.

He didn’t give in. Illya wrapped his free arm around her back to hold her flush against him, rocking her down into his palm. His fingers thrust deeply and he pressed the heel of his hand to her clit, made her look down at him with one jolting shift of her body in his grip.

She gave in to his greedy kisses, too lost in the heat balling up in her to pay attention to this game. She wanted him to win, didn’t care at all that she was sweating over him, losing her vision.

“I want to taste you now,” he confessed, his lips hot over hers.

She moaned then, shameless and melting into the sudden crook of his fingers inside of her, his palm hot on her and tireless, willing and able to go on until she relented. She’d never been so glad of his strength, so wary of what it could do to her.

“Illya,” she begged through her teeth. “If you stop, I’ll kill you.”

She didn’t catch his smirk, her eyes already slammed shut.

She rested her head against his, rocking harder into him before he rolled over her clit with his thumb, fast and pressured, paced with the thrust inside of her, and she cried out, her eyes rolling back with an obscenely dark moan. She twitched in the crook of his arm and he steadied her, thighs limp and shaking, back down into his lap.

He hummed, smug.

“Don’t,” she breathed shallowly, though she didn't think she could ever ask anything of him again. He was still inside her, gently revelling in the tightness of her climax.

“Snowed in,” he mused quietly, pressing into her. “You could call avalanche with all that noise.”

“Ha ha,” Gaby managed, and his hand firmed on her back. “Illya...” He waited. "How did you know where... how to?”

As she’d expected, his shoulders shifted a little, broadening his chest. “You are not as difficult to read as I imagined. It is good spy’s job to read his mark. You touched me as you wanted to be touched; hard, soft... here,” he took to her breast tenderly, moved to trace the warm crease of her inner thigh, “- there. So it goes.”

She squinted at him. “Easy to read?”

“We are not ourselves like this,” he excused her, then quietened a little. “You saw me.”

She did. She wanted to see it again.

“You are an excellent spy,” he said sincerely, and pressed a warm kiss to the hollow of her throat. “In bed, you are open book.”

“In the car,” she corrected him, still reeling with the heat of his fingers inside her.

“ _Da,_ ” he said softly.

“You want to taste me.”

She revelled in his shock, watched his lips part and wet subtly under the tip of his tongue. Catching himself, he nodded and dropped his gaze back to his working hand.

Gaby thought over this for a long, long time, deciding his fate and making him wait for it. “I want that too.”

Illya kissed her hungrily then, and she felt the immediate shift of him, readying to move her.

“Not here,” she said, and felt the weight of her words with immense regret. But she had cause, reason. If she didn’t throw the line outside the car, they would never catch it again. “At the hotel. In Göschenen.”

Illya nodded. “In bed,” he said thoughtlessly.

“If you like.”

After a moment he hummed contentedly, grazing his knuckles over her thigh.

“But until then—” she cut herself off, having spoken so thickly with desire she’d surprised herself.

She took his wrist and guided him out of her, mourning the loss of him inside her as keenly as he did. With a courage she didn’t know she possessed, she raised his shining fingers to his mouth to watch him.

He sucked them into his mouth, down to the knuckle, as if he’d been waiting for her to let him. A breath of disbelief escaped her at the sight of him; sheened with sweat and licking the taste of her off his fingers like she were that rare, ripe fruit again; savouring it with a sincerity that frightened her. He reached to kissed her then and she tasted him, her, and the heated eagerness in the press of his tongue. He bucked instinctively, straining up to reach her.

She pulled up her underwear with a snap at her hip, and sat flush over the bulge of his cock. He held the back of her neck and rolled his head against the window, smudging the steam of their breath with his hair.

“Gaby—” he started, deep and slow.

She kissed his temple, watched his pained features soften. “You want to, now?”

Illya nodded, eyes closed and blindly taking her hip in his hand, rolling her down over him.

She reached between them to pull at the band of his briefs. Through a thatch of blond hair and clean sweat, unimaginably hotter now, she took his cock in her hand and stroked with the same pressure he’d leant into when she’d touched him; learning the pace he wanted, where he wanted her most.

His brow furrowed, mouth open and breathing in stutters. She watched him, feeling with new clarity how he must have felt when she’d fallen apart in his hands; how rewarding it was to bring someone of iron will shaking to their knees.

She firmed her hand around the hard length of him, drawing over the tip with her thumb. He groaned then, deeper than she’d ever heard. She cupped her free hand over the side of his neck, felt the movement there as he swallowed and gasped for her. He wasn’t too proud to beg. She heard her name among the murmured Russian, the curses and prayers, and it lit a possessive fire in her; made her want work harder to hear it again and again.

The closer she brought him to the edge, the more he reached out to touch her; his palm on her cheek to pull her in and kiss her so gently she wondered if he was awake. The other hand wandered to her hair, sliding down to rest on the small of her back and push her along his thighs to please her.

She flattened her free hand to his stomach to feel him stutter, coaxing him to finish and not once relieving the speed and the pressure on him. He tensed suddenly, grabbed her back to pull her to his chest, moaning, moaning against her neck and kissing her hard as he came, spilling hotly into her hand with a loud, crackling groan. Gaby worked him through it, drawing it out of him until there was nothing left to give.

He slackened back against the door, dragging her with him and panting against her chest, kissing her mindlessly there, tasting the sweat on her.

She hummed pleasantly, his lips trailing over her breasts. She ran her fingers up the nape of his neck lazily, tousling his hair, letting him suck kisses over her collarbones and mumble whatever it was he had to say in his mother tongue.

Eventually he calmed, leant his head against the window. The car was dead silent but for his breathing, deep and long to slow himself.

She showed him the mess on her hand.

Illya cleared his throat, taking in the sight opulently. As an afterthought, he reached down into the inside pocket of his jacket and handed her his linen handkerchief.

She thanked him with a discreet smile, wiping her hand slowly. She dropped the cloth on the front seat, suddenly remembering their clothes. They were an unwelcome reminder of what they’d worn before all of this, and what they’d have to put on afterwards; as if they’d never touched each other, bare and sweating in the dark. The thought of dressing filled her with dread.

Illya watched her carefully.

She splayed her hand over his chest, pausing as she felt something cooling in the dip between her thumb and forefinger.

Gaby paused for a moment, looking with a dare to his soft, tired eyes. She pressed the back of her hand to her lips to taste him on her tongue.

Illya made the most carnal sound. A swallow half in his throat, he met her in a messy kiss to bless her; reward her for learning another spell she’d cast over him, one she could use to draw that impulsiveness out of him whenever she wanted to. _At the hotel,_ she decided with heady anticipation, shocked by the renewed need in his tongue, dreaming idly of his face between her thighs with half as much passion.

Eventually, Illya reluctantly pulled his trousers back to his waist, lifting his hips and huffing with the struggle in the little space he had. He pulled her to his side, to curl her up half on top of him and half against the back of the seat to nestle there. He was settling into his sated body with a natural, easy calm she'd never seen on him. Perhaps this was the eyes off his back, she thought, with a deep, sweet happiness she could eat if it were in her hand, and quietly kissed over him.

Illya took her arm into his open jacket, where her fingers traced the rise and fall of his muscles under the suede, and tugged her side up to cover her.

She tucked her head under his chin easily. “What happened to _all night_?”

Illya, concerned, turned only to see immediately through her. Her smirk was helpless. He huffed. “You are warmer now?”

“What do you think?”

He tested her temperature dutifully, brushing her flushed cheek with his fingertips. “I think my work is done.”

“That’s confident talk.”

“You were very verbal.” 

She allowed herself to beam at him then, shameless. “Illya,” she began, before she lost the rest to a yawn, settling back into his collar. “Goodnight.”

“Chop Shop,” he mumbled, and turned his cheek to rest in her hair.

 

* * *

 

 

Napoleon Solo was blessed by the sun and the isolation of the long road out of Göschenen; he had already fallen gracelessly on his ass twice, his Italian brogues no match for half-frozen, unsalted tarmac. His boots, along with the rest of his winter wear, were in the back of that damned car Gaby had hijacked and, apparently, used to flee the country with the Russian’s dead body strapped to the roof, since neither she nor Peril had arrived for their rendezvous.

He’d spent _his_ night at the bed and breakfast, sleeping naked as a baby for the loss of his pyjamas. Before making the trip up the mountain to recover and rebuke two thirds of his team, he’d enjoyed a leisurely breakfast of Swiss porridge and coffee, as a sort of indulgent punishment for his likely-dead friends, who’d so cruelly stood him up.

They were lucky the mission had a low risk, open scheduled itinerary. Solo had gathered the intelligence himself to save them from Waverly’s wrath, and had only come out to find them to rid his poor soul of guilt. That, and boasting was no fun without an audience.

He was a mile and a half out of Göschenen when Solo found the tell-tale break in the white wall of snow, a car-sized trail leading off down the slope.

He tapped the folded map against his thigh and crossed the road. Already mourning the state of his new shoes, he followed the bend of the snow and dirt to find that same car; ugly, aged, and covered in white flakes as if it had been moulded from the snow itself.

Solo trudged noisily over to it, faintly aware of what he might find before he did. He came to the driver’s side door, used the fold of his map to scrape the ice from the window.

Peril sat on the passenger side, armed with a map of his own, and was glaring flatly through the window at him. At Solo’s unarmed shrug, Illya gave a deep scowl and reached over to open the door from the inside. 

“Morning, Peril,” Solo said, more a question than a greeting. He slid into the driver’s seat, closed the door behind him.

“Cowboy.”

“Where’s Gaby?”

They looked over to the back seat simultaneously, catching Gaby curled up and sleeping. She wore a fresh set of winter clothes, Solo noticed, with a great and looming interest.

He looked at Illya.

“Car is broken,” Illya said.

“I can see that,” Solo returned. He looked Illya up and down; same slacks, same turtleneck - though it was difficult to tell; he imagined the man had a wardrobe lined with hundreds of the things. “Sleep well, Peril?”

“Fine, thank you. You went off brief.”

“I fulfilled the objective, which is more than can be said for the two of you, skulking off for a drive to Make-out Point.”

Illya bared his teeth, trying to keep his voice down. “We would not have _had_ to drive if _you_ had not left us at the station.”

“Stop it,” Gaby said, entirely awake, and had been for some time. “You both need to get out and push the car. The worst of the ice should have melted by now. I think it can take the hill, even if we have to roll back to Göschenen. Your boots are in the back, Solo.”

Both men exhaled through their noses. Neither made the the first move, still content to bicker until Gaby hit them, which was usually the tipping point of their frequent 'discussions'.

Gaby glared at the back of Illya’s neck, spotting the gentle pink rise her nails had drawn there.

“Besides,” she prompted lightly. “We need to get back to the hotel.”

Illya was out in the snow before she could blink.   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me for 5.5k of pure sin, oh my god. You asked for it!!!
> 
> [cleanses my doomed soul]
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments are my fave things in the whole wide world - please let me know what you think! xxx


	3. Chapter 3

Illya in the sun was a world away from Illya in the dark. The gilt of his hair was fine and bright, so rightly high up that Gaby could _just_ reach up to place a crown on him, if she wanted. A laurel wreath would suit him, she decided. With his build, with that nose and his sharp eyes. Reproachful, regal.

He was softer to look over now; he had knelt at her feet with his gaze firmly on her, waiting for her to let him work.

She had him all to herself and, eyeing the blur of the sheer curtains shielding the window, she believed that this was privacy enough to bring him back to her all over again.

Napoleon was gone, but it hadn’t been easy.

Illya had stalked about the hotel room like a caged tiger, his chin in one hand and the other clutched in a fist under his arm. Gaby followed his pacing with fascination over her newspaper, chatting idly away to Solo and portraying little sense of urgency.

She wanted to see Illya wait. See what he would do to procure the space for them both and send Solo on a little mission of his own. An errand, perhaps. Some needless scouting about the Swiss village.

But Napoleon was relentless. Illya had already listed a great deal of potential distractions for him. He had even called room service to prompt the arrival of the sweet girl from the lobby, but Solo was unmoved, interested more in the token of a side dish he’d ordered in his desperation. He’d already begun a lengthy speech on the merits of truffle oil when Illya suggested that he go to the kitchen to make his feelings known in person.

Gaby had a sneaking suspicion that Napoleon knew _exactly_ what he was doing, and that he was taking as much enjoyment from Illya's squirming impatience as she was.

Solo had settled beside Gaby on the settee by then, and was close to taking his shoes off when Illya stammered something unintelligible, almost strangled, which made Gaby smirk into her paper.

“I beg your pardon?”

“A new car,” Illya said again, quiet and brilliant. He pointed at Solo. “ _You_ must ask Waverly to send money for new car.”

“Oh, _must_ I?” asked Solo, a little curl on his lips. “I believe the sorry state of that old thing is of your own making.”

“You compromised mission. It is your fault. Fix it.”

“In that case,” he said coolly, “I suppose Gaby ought to come with me.”

“I want to take a bath,” she decided.

“At two o’clock in the afternoon?”

“I spent the morning pushing a car uphill.”

“You were _at the wheel_.”

She was. Once the engine had finally sparked to life, Illya slipped into the front bench beside her, taking advantage of Solo’s blind spot to press his palm to her inner thigh as she drove, mindless, back to Göschenen.

“I _want_ to take a _bath_ ,” she echoed with renewed intent, and folded the newspaper firmly in her hands to state that this would be the end of it.

And so it was.

“Alright. I'll buy something outrageous.”

“Likely you will steal it,” Illya muttered. “Crash it.”

“Peril, you wound me.”

“Buy a car for us, Solo,” Gaby said. “I trust you. You wouldn’t steal from a humble family dealership.”

Something glinted in his eye that suggested maybe he would. But he took her trust - however insincere - to heart, and he put his hand to his own in a gaudy, saccharine promise. “I will do my very best.”

“Take it for a drive first,” she reminded him. “And don’t skim the papers. The last thing we need is another bill in Zurich.”

“Dawdle, wander, spend as long as possible away from the hotel room,” Solo said, rising to stand. “Got it.”

“Very funny, Cowboy,” said Illya.

“Keep up the good work, Peril. One day _you_ might crack a smile and have us all on our knees.” He drank up the look on their faces, then caught himself with a surprised little beam. “With laughter. Laughing. On the ground.”

With that, he left.

The tips of Illya’s ears were pink. Gaby spotted this with unbridled delight, as he locked the door after Solo and the burning suggestion he’d carved in his wake.

He didn’t turn around for a long time.

“Illya,” she said.

“Hmm.”

“Come here.”

She had expected him to be blushing, but he wasn’t. He calmly crossed the room and came to the settee, standing close and tall and certain.

She found then that she was nervous.

So he took to his knees in front of her. That did not help at all. He must finally have seen the humour in Solo’s astute observation, having quirked a guilty smile and rested his gaze into her lap.

She’d brought all of Russia to its knees, she thought indulgently, as he loomed over and bowed down to her all at once. She wondered if she would ever see that jacket without thinking of all he’d done to her, all she’d done to him, while gathered up inside of it.

“I did not ask what you think about,” Illya said.

“What?”

“When you said you had thought of this, in the car,” he said slowly. “I did not ask what you wanted.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“ _You_ said I was easy to read.”

Illya smiled wryly, drawing her eyes up from his shoulders. “I hoped you would surprise me.”

His hands came to rest on her thighs. He would feel them shaking — she couldn’t stop herself, and couldn’t fathom why they trembled the way they did. She wasn’t afraid. He held her in his palms with a warm, dry steadiness she’d been craving since the moment he’d left the car, walked into the lobby between she and Solo as if nothing had ever happened.

That stirred her, then. She pressed her hands over his to double the weight he had on her, feel his fingers push into her skin.

She wanted his hands on her. As she ran her small hands over his broad, calloused ones she knew this. She had known for months. Only now she wanted his weight and strength and height too, and to see him succumb the way he did in the car; break a little, drop his plan of attack, give in. He was already half way there - his eyes were soft and calm, as if this were wholly natural and right to him; to his moral compass, his soviet sensibilities.

So there they were, with Solo gone and Illya’s golden head of hair bright in the glint of the winter sun.

“Undress me,” she decided.

Illya squeezed her thighs before he left them. He slipped her winter boots off her heels, set them neatly together on the floor. She’d expected him to take off her sweater first, but he hadn’t. Instead he took off her thick socks, tucking them into the boots as if she could lose them in this pristine hotel room.

She wore capris, and he touched the little V-shaped cut at her calf, which the top of her boots had hidden. A little detail he liked. Gaby lifted her hips to wriggle out of them, and he pulled them off her legs one by one, dropped them on the floor.

He leant against her knees to run his hands up her sides, pushing her arms to rise so he could take off her sweater. It occurred to her then just how many layers she’d packed on in the car at his demand. He’d waded out into the snow for her the night before, to open the trunk and scour through her messy suitcase for her heaviest clothes, sacrificing clashing textures and pattern for warmth, necessity. The result was an ugly, overstuffed mess of fleeces and wool, offensive even to Gaby’s eye. She had thanked him for his aesthetic sacrifice, and he’d clicked his tongue and shook his head at her - she thought too little of him. 

All those layers landed on the carpet in a soft clump, and finally Illya reached her brassiere, where he rolled the straps nostalgically under his thumbs.

“What else?” he said.

“Kiss me.”

He did, slow and soft with a tentative taste of his tongue. She let him in with a sigh, fighting the urge fall back into the settee and pull him onto her again.

He braced his hands on her knees, leaning back to meet her eye and wait for his next task.

“Pick me up.”

Illya slipped his hands under her thighs and rose easily, wrapping her legs around his waist. “You have yet to surprise me,” he reminded her.

“Shush.”

Gaby was as tall as him, then. The glass of his watch face was cool under her, the leather strap pinching her skin. Yes, she thought - her father used to carry her on his shoulders. That’s where she’d felt this light and thrilling dizziness before.

She bit her cheek, ignored the turn in her stomach.

She took in the whole room as Illya must have; the dust on the top of the wardrobe, the new warp of the furniture, and, through the window, the milling of people over the cobbled, snowy street below. So _this_ was why his eyes would flit about so restlessly — so much more to look over, ready himself to fight.

Illya pulled her face back to his with a kiss on the square of her jaw. He still held her with ease, adjusting his grip on the soft undersides of her thighs only to hold her a little tighter.

“Now, where do you want to go?”

“Bed.”

He nodded, predicting her, and pressed his chin over her shoulder with a rasp of his stubble. He walked easily, slowly, to the other side of the room to sit her down on the feather duvet, the white cotton crisp and crinkling to gentle the descent. Her knees hung softly over the edge.

“Now you,” she prompted lightly, leaning back on her elbows to look at him.

Illya shed his jacket, his sweater. Stood by the window, the day carved the shape of him into shadows and highlights, all firm and fair as white gold. He bent to pull off his boots. There, his shoulders rounded and showed to her all of the deep dips and muscle of his shoulder blades, the stretch of his back. With a swallow, she noticed he’d been hiding two perfect dimples at the base of his spine, ripe for pushing her heels into.

The click and shift of his belt was shameless, a little jarring in the quiet in a way that focused her, brought a new flutter in her stomach and quickened her pulse. She didn’t dare move over the crackling duvet in case she woke him; reminded him of some buried rationale he’d compromise by, perhaps, breathing or looking at her like this. But soon his trousers were over the chair, and he stood straight again in front of her, in his underwear and as tall and unconcerned as if he were fully dressed.

“And now?”

Gaby lingered. “I haven’t made up my mind.”

He decided for her, taking to his knees again and curling his fingers around the back of her calves. He looked up at her, lashes long and dark like filigree — what else could she do, then? 

She only nodded.

Her shins pressed into the warm thatch of his chest as he traced the back of her knees. His first kiss landed on her calf, a second to the soft crease of her bent knee. Easily he lifted her legs over his shoulders, all the memory of that firm, broad heat rushing back to her.

Her breath caught - his lips brushed the inside of her thigh with just a gentle turn of his head, the rasp of his unshaven cheek sharp and hot. She couldn’t drop down from the brace of her elbows in the mattress. She was lured in; staring, bewitched.

Like worship, he mouthed over the delicate skin of her inner thighs, tasting them, his eyes gently closed. This she had never seen on him before. This was wholly new. His relief -  as if he’d come home, tasted something he’d missed  - was like an illusion; too frightening to tear her gaze away, in case she were to miss his grandest trick.

High on her thigh, she felt the nip of his sharp teeth and then the hot flat of his tongue to soothe her. He opened his eyes to measure her reaction, and she reddened under that stare. It reminded her that he could see - could _feel -_ what he was doing, how it changed her. His hands steadied the embarrassing tremble of her knees only barely, all ten digits pushing into the trained muscle she’d almost forgotten how to use. In her right mind, she could have locked him between her legs and never let go. His slowing mouth suggested that he too had thought of this, and offered a tentative, lingering kiss to the crease of her thigh as if it could possibly dissuade her.

Illya shifted her closer. He looped his fingers into her underwear, his steady gaze rising from his hands to her face, and pulled.

She helped him, though she hadn’t needed to; he worked reverently, as careful with her underwear as he was with his few, dearest belongings. It was a revelation to watch his rough hands delicately peel the garment down her legs. He showed her the gentleness she’d underestimated; one he reserved for those who’d crossed the threshold, found the key.

She wondered what she’d done to deserve it.

Once those were off and long forgotten, he brought her legs back to his shoulders, all grip and weight again as he settled between her thighs.

“You have thought of this?” he asked. His voice was a shock, breaking the quiet and reverberating deep. She came close to grabbing his hair; tug him down to hum and lap over her where she needed him.

Spotting her fidgeting over her stomach, he covered her hands with one of his.

She lay back, eyes to the ceiling. “I have.”

His answering sigh was hot on her skin, followed by a graze of his jaw. She was dying, she thought. The tongue he wet his lips with was just _lying_ there, gathering the heat she needed but keeping it all to himself.

“I saw you watching,” Illya said then, and her eyes popped open with dread. “Making me wait for Cowboy to leave. To work hard for this.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Hmm,” came his clipped reply, but there was play in him. She wanted to lean up to see him again, watch the quiet amusement flicker over his face. But she was flat on the duvet, restless and lost for words. If she were to see his mouth so near to her, where she was naked and shining and radiating a rolling, desperate heat…

“Illya,” she managed, with a slight shift of her hips to tempt him. “You have waited long enough for this.”

He hummed again. “Then what is one more minute to me?”

“Don’t—”

He sighed a deep, hot lick into her and she bucked up, gripped at his hand on her stomach like a vice.

“Illya!”

Her hips were held down with a cross of his arm, where he parted from her with a kiss so chaste she would have laughed if she could.

Gaby was up on her elbows again, glaring down at his waiting smirk. But she was _throbbing_ , panting for more of the taste he’d given her. His lips were soft and pink and sheened. He had her thighs in his palms and was testing the weight of her, the shaking tension in her muscles.

“You’re a cruel man.”

“No,” he said resolutely. “Not to you.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

With a furrowed brow his lips returned, slower, with a long and thoughtful hum.

Gaby hissed sharply, grip tight in his golden hair. The tremble in her legs washed away as she sank down, brushing roughly over his scalp and making him groan into her, sink his tongue deeper. She didn’t know what she was babbling about, only that it was German and mumbled and caught in her throat, broken up with smaller moans of encouragement. Her chest was heaving when she felt something new, spiralling around and then finally into her, coaxing her closer with an undulating roll through her body.

“Illya, _please_ —”

“What is it?” _God_ , his lips on her, mumbling and kissing and lapping her up when he could.

“ _Good_ ,” she managed, her breath hitching.

“Good,” he agreed. He was looking to undo her, to send her collapsing into him again. Her back arched, pushed deeper against him to feel him tighter, closer. She blessed and cursed his shoulders for holding her steady. She would have braced into the mattress to ride against his lips if she could. The firm press of his nose, his chin…

She was losing her mind.

Vision blank and mouth wide open, she came with his tongue circling and his fingers pulsing thick, faultless. His free hand cupped her waist, ticklish at the curve of her back when she arched high and dug her heels into his shoulders, pushed his mouth into her. He followed her, moaning roughly with surprise.

She settled into the bed, thighs weak around his neck and a slow, warm pulse coursing through her.

“ _Gutt_ ,” she confirmed, senseless.

Illya only kissed her thigh, returning to taste what he'd drawn from her as she writhed and groaned under him, a little helpless.

All too soon, too sensitive, missing his weight, she dropped her legs from his shoulders to hook her feet under his arms, gesturing weakly for him to rise from the floor. When the soft, wet heat of his mouth left her, the absence throbbed and ached, pleading her to cover herself with him again.

But he had already obeyed her, bending forward to brush her hair aside, kiss her neck, her collar bone. Her arms rose to wrap around him but he stopped her, reached behind her back to undo her brassiere and pull it up her outstretched arms instead.

Then he settled back over her, still tasting his own lips wistfully before kissing over hers, breathing her in, pushing her up the bed to the pillows at the headboard. Then he ground down, his bound cock hard between her thighs and he moaned into her, hung his head to breathe over her neck.

“We could…”

“Yes, you—” she kissed him deep, hungry. “Yes…”

“I have one. My case--”

“Find it.”

Illya nodded into her shoulder, heaved himself up quickly. She watched his long strides to his suitcase across the room, his briefs unforgiving over his ass and the lean, tight muscles there.

Unconcernedly naked on the bed, her own body still thrummed with orgasm, all else forgotten. She leant on her elbow luxuriantly and could only watch, greedy as a king, as Illya sat steadily on his heels to unclasp his suitcase, rifling for something long hidden.

He didn’t even close the case, a slim square box already in his hand as he returned with a dark, sharp want in his eyes. He gave her the box, let her fiddle with it while he tore off his briefs and climbed over her again, covering her with an endless mass of muscle and weight that made her mouth water. She had his insistent permission to touch him all over, taste the dips and shadows of his arms, the tightening strength in the back of his thighs. She wished then that he would lie down so she could move over every last inch of him too — he felt this way for her, she thought prettily; this emanating need to feel, be felt, until she could sense nothing but his broad hands and heavy body on her.

Gaby tugged him flush against her stomach then, her heels into those glorious dimples flanking his spine. He strained through the relentless press, his cock wet on her thigh and burying his groans into her chest, her bared breasts.

She handed him the freed rubber, hurrying him with breaths of encouragement down his neck. He readied himself and tried to meet her wandering lips, burning up until she felt the new, unbridled strength of him in his touch; on her again with need, stroking tenderly and grabbing at her all at once, torn up. He tried to slow himself, breathing deep and staggering his kisses.

“Gaby,” he began, rebuking her again for the impatient bites she laid into him.

“Illya,” she mocked sternly, her fingertips tracing over his lower back. That made him shiver, his eyes glaze over.

So he gave in. He reached between them to slip his fingers into her again. She breathed impatience into his mouth, tore his glossed hand up to kiss his thumb, lick the inside of his wrist before she could think better of it. He disguised a choke with a clearing of his throat, dipping his hips against the mattress to still himself.

She tightened her thighs around him, begged him.

Finally he took his cock and guided himself in, peering down only to press his face back into her neck with a loud, guttural moan. He filled her up with thick, unbelievable heat, gripping her thigh to steady himself.

“ _Bozhe moi,_ ” he said, slowing to stop as soon as he’d started. “Gaby, It… You’re—”

“I know,” she consoled him, wrapping her arms to feel the work in his shoulders. She kissed the low rumbling in his throat until he took her thigh and rolled his hips into her again. His eyes closed, losing himself and building to the rhythm she’d craved, dreamt of on him, and he was as beautiful as she’d imagined.

It was a shame to break it.

“Surprise,” she whispered, and his eyes snapped open.

Gaby grabbed him and rolled, slammed him back down into the mattress to sit on his stomach.

He had let her. Still, his sharp eyes softened and took to the ceiling with an embarrassed, wry smile she’d missed.

“You win,” he commended, trying to stifle his laboured breathing.

She nodded, flushed and tired. “Good.”

“Hmm.” His fingers pressed into her hips then, and she watched his eyes lower to her sitting on him, idly grinding over his stomach. “You like to be tall.”

Gaby gave him a withering look. He and Solo knew how it riled her; a favourite pastime of theirs to tease her for it, compare her to a little raspberry or a cherry tomato when she’d redden and snap back.

“Then up you go,” he encouraged innocently, and ran his hands under the round of her thighs.

She hid her smile. She rose only to settle back down on his cock with a pleasant stretch, her walls plush and tight from coming once already. Under her, his brows shot up and his lips formed a perfect shape; a half-caught gasp as she tightened around him, swivelled into the crux of his hips to adjust to the size of him. His palms tightened, almost wholly encircling her waist in a ring, as if she might disappear.

The angle was right, and she began to ride. Illya rose to meet her with a roll of his hips, cried out when she bent forward to taste the musky heat of his chest, the sheen rising from him there. Still Russian leather, she confirmed greedily. Still soap and shaving cream.

She braced her hands on his stomach, slipping when she’d closed her eyes for too long. He steadied her, guiding her back to him.

“Touch me,” she breathed. He nodded quickly, fingertips on her and rolling to match the rhythm she lead him with. He pulled her back down to kiss him, the angle of his cock pushing _just_ right there. She dropped her head to his shoulder and let out a sob of a breath she couldn’t hold in.

“Good?” he asked, a sharp tear in his own voice. He grunted with another upstroke, kissed her hair with his free hand cupped over the nape of her neck.

“Stay—” she started, but he moved — even _better._ “Oh! _Sc_ _hei_ _ße, Illya…_ ”

“I know,” he echoed her with a low laugh, and he sped up, took her ass in his palms to pull her impossibly tighter and deepen his thrusts.

Gaby lost her senses then, slackening to lie on his broad chest with her lips pressed to whatever she could reach, growing wild over every inch of him. Every pulse of his hips burst her conscious thought, his fingertips on her swollen clit and then spreading her over him, his gasping mouth kissing and licking. He was murmuring her name then; coaxing her, whispering lowly to her that it was okay to come again, that she could do it for him. She wanted to hit him for that, swallow him whole.

Another undulation of pleasure, burning deeper than the first, finally spread through all her limbs before she shuddered, clenched around his cock and came again with a faint cry over his ear.

That did it; the tightening of her, a new film of wetness slick and hot to push into. Illya hunted blindly for her lips and thrust up into her with all he could, his feet planted on the mattress. He clamped his jaw, palms broad and tight on her back and drawing in and out of her, until all she could do was blearily watch him throw his head back into the pillows, eyes screwed tight and seeing stars. He came with a long, bodily groan that shook through his stomach, twitching and tensing under her.

Then he exhaled shakily, and it shivered over her neck.

She kissed him, and he returned it with his hand in her hair, still catching his breath. He was softening inside her, slow and relenting, the stretch still so tight it stung. He hummed and breathed, tugged her flat against him. She rose and fell limply on his chest

“How was your day, Illya?” she mumbled, half asleep.

He groaned and shifted slightly, still deep inside her. “I have had worse afternoons.”

Gaby touched the gentle mess of his hair, swept her fingertips over his brow to soothe him. She rolled down onto his cock again to open his eyes. Like clockwork, his long lashes parted, bringing his blue eyes back to her with a faint smile crinkling them at the edges.

He took her cheek in his hand. “How about you? Did you get what you wanted?”

She shrugged, non-committal.

His lips pursed and he tightened his hand on her back, threatening to roll her over. But she matched him, bracing her knees and pushing her palms to the mattress to stop him. She kissed him hard, pried him open with a gentling slip of her tongue.

He sighed resentfully then, letting her in. 

So this was his rolling about and kissing, she thought. He’d had a dog’s luck today, and she a king’s ransom. She let him withdraw and lay her down while he dealt with the rubber, soon crawling back onto the bed to return to her. There he trailed his steady hand over her waist, taking in the reality of his late night imaginings, not a pair of blue pyjamas in sight.

Gaby stretched out prettily, let him kiss what he could of her. His lips had only found the downy vale between her breasts when she rolled her head to peer out of the window, paling at the sight of a dark grey coat scoring through the snow.

It wasn’t Solo, but Illya had already sensed her freezing under him.

“Everything alright?”

“I should take a bath before he comes back.”

Illya muttered into her chest, mutinous.

“Or a shower,” she suggested weightily, an invitation. “He won’t notice which.”

This silenced him.

“Illya,” she began, brushing over his hair and gathering a little courage. “I want to do this again.”

He looked up from her chest. She wondered if she would ever get used to seeing him like that, sated, golden; wondered whether she’d recognise him while he worked beside her again; back to darting eyes and bloodthirsty, ticking hands, as if he'd never held her so generously with them. _This_ was what drew her to him, she surmised, even when it was deeply hidden — the warmth of him the KGB hadn’t laid their hands on yet. She vowed privately then that they never would. He could keep that part for himself, an indulgence, to share only if he truly wished.

“I want that too.”

She nodded at him, tried not to melt too noticeably. “Downtime only.”

“Of course.”

“And don’t tell Solo. Not yet.”

Illya gave her a look.

“Well, I don’t know what you two talk about.”

“He talks enough for both of us.” He shrugged then, quietly fond. “I think he is more invested in my bedfellows than his own.”

“Perhaps he hopes the two will cross?”

Illya threw a wild stare at her.

“I must shower,” she said lightly, wriggling out from under him.

“Gaby,” he said urgently, grabbing her wrist, following her. “Gaby, what do you mean?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah! So this happened... Sorry for the delay! Honestly this fic was supposed to be a oneshot lmao but I can't get these idiots out of my head.  
> But this is truly the end, much as I'd love for Solo to reappear and confirm that yes, absolutely, he hoped both Illya and Gaby would have taken the hint by now. 
> 
> P.S: catch me on my own deathbed comparing Illya Kuryakin to various precious metals, omg...


End file.
